Privacy Policy

Purpose

This Privacy Policy reaffirms the Bank's policies of respecting the confidentiality of information obtained in the course of the Bank's business and the maintenance of the Bank's reputation and avoidance of conduct, which might reflect adversely on the Bank.

Privacy Principles

2.1 It is our policy to treat our customers’ personal information as confidential and to not reveal or disclose any such information to third parties.

2.2 For this purpose, we will, in accordance with industry best practice and international standards, safeguard the security and confidentiality of our customers’ personal information, and limit the collection and use of such information to the minimum we require in order to deliver superior service to our customers, which includes processing requests for banking products and services to our customers, as well as advising our customers about our products, services and other opportunities.

2.3 The Bank will always seek consent by the customer before any personal data can be collected and processed. Any personal information collected about you on our website that you had willingly submitted, or information in which was collected automatically by cookies, is deemed consensual given that you are able to disable cookies should you wish not to have your information be collected via cookies (explained further below in our Cookie Policy). However, the Bank will further grant the customer the right to access and/or amend all their personal data that the Bank may hold, provided their request is not in breach of public policy and applicable laws and regulations.

2.4 Additionally, some information collected (voluntarily submitted with your consent) is required to verify that we are legally permitted to provide products and services to you, as well as to comply with international anti-money laundry and anti-terrorist financing requirements.

2.5 Moreover, we limit our employees’ access to our customers’ information to those who have a legitimate business reason for knowing such information. In addition, in our relationship with third parties, we will require them to adhere to our privacy policy and standards and to allow us to monitor their compliance therewith.

2.6 Although at Gulf Bank we strive to protect and empower our customers from privacy and data breaches by taking necessary security measures and by complying with applicable laws and regulations, your personal information will be collected and processed solely in Kuwait, which may have data protection laws that differ from the laws in the country you reside in.

If disclosure of such information is made at your written consent or approval

2.8 You may be requested during the use of this web site, to supply personal information, especially while using the On-line Banking, financial tools, calculators or questionnaires. The provider of tool, the calculator and questionnaire may retain the information you submit. This information will only be used by us to provide you with the services you have requested or are likely to be interested in. Moreover, other information may be collected using cookies and similar tracking technology, which will be explained further in our Cookie Policy below.

Cookie Policy

3.1 Cookies are small text files which a website may put on your computer or mobile device when you first visit a site or page. The cookie will help the website, or another website, to recognize your device the next time you visit. Web beacons or other similar files can also do the same thing. We use the term” Cookies” in this policy to refer to all files that collect information in this way.

3.2 There are many functions cookies serve. For example, they can help us to remember your username and preferences, analyze how well our website is performing, or even allow us to recommend content we believe will be most relevant to you.

3.3 Certain cookies contain personal information. for example, if you click to "remember me" when logging in, a cookie will store your username. Most cookies won't collect information that identifies you, and will instead collect more general information such as how users arrive at and use our websites, or a user's general location.

Gulf Bank uses cookies on this website and similar tools across our digital platforms to improve our performance and enhance your user experience. They help us to know a little bit about you and how you use our website.

Generally, our cookies perform up to three different functions:

Essential cookies

Some cookies are essential for the operation of our website. For example, some cookies allow us to identify subscribers and ensure they can access the subscription only pages. If a subscriber opts to disable these cookies, the user will not be able to access all of the content that a subscription entitles them to.

Performance Cookies

We utilize other cookies to analyze how our visitors use our websites and to monitor website performance. This allows us to provide a high quality experience by customizing our offering and quickly identifying and fixing any issues that arise. For example, we might use performance cookies to keep track of which pages are most popular, which method of linking between pages is most effective, and to determine why some pages are receiving error messages. We might also use these cookies to highlight articles or site services that we think will be of interest to you based on your usage of the website.

Functionality Cookies

We use functionality cookies to allow us to remember your preferences. For example, cookies save you the trouble of typing in your username every time you access the site, and recall your customization preferences, such as which regional edition of the website you want to see when you log in.

We only allow third parties to serve cookies to help us monitor our website traffic (eg: Google Analytics). We may also use third party cookies to help us with market research, revenue tracking, improving site functionality and monitoring compliance with our terms and conditions and copyright policy.

If you click on a hyperlink from Gulf Bank’s website to any third party websites (e.g. if you 'share' content from Gulf Bank's websites with friends or colleagues through social networks), you may be sent cookies from these third party websites. Third party websites will have their own privacy and cookie policies which Gulf Bank cannot control. Please check the third-party websites for more information about their cookies and how to manage them.

As we've explained above, cookies help you to get the most out of our websites. However, you do have the option to disable our cookies, but you may not enjoy the full experience.

Our emails may contain a single, campaign-unique "web beacon pixel" to tell us whether our emails are opened and verify any clicks through to links or advertisements within the email. We may use this information for purposes including determining which of our emails are more interesting to users, to query whether users who do not open our emails wish to continue receiving them. The pixel will be deleted when you delete the email. If you do not wish the pixel to be downloaded to your device, you should select to receive emails from us in plain text rather than HTML.

Cookies are maintained by your web browser, so the steps for deleting them will vary depending on which browser you are using. Please refer to your browser's help index for their specific instructions.

If you have any queries regarding this Cookie Policy, please contact our Privacy Officer by e-mail at cookiepolicy@gulfbank.com.kw, This document was last updated on July 2018. More detail on how businesses use cookies is available at www.allaboutcookies.org.